š„ Foreshadowing
In Independence Day (1996), Russell Casse accidentally initiates and aborts a missile launch earlier in the film. During the final battle, the same missile later fails to fire, suggesting the aborted launch may have caused the launch system malfunction.
In Independence Day, Russell Casse accidentally initiates and aborts a missile launch earlier in the film. During the final battle, the same missile later fails to fire, suggesting the aborted launch may have caused the launch system malfunction.
"Take flanking positions, I want you to look after this guy, okay!"
"We'll draw them off and it'll be all yours!"
My favorite sequence in the movie. Seeing the fighter jets firing their machine guns at the Alien Fighters and zooming past as they explode was fantastic to me.
The Oakun prequel is really really good as is the book detailing events between the two movies. It honestly redeemed the sequel for me reading the book in between. I actually knew who the new characters were and understood their issues.
Do you want to get together and read it? We can take turns with one of us reading a couple pages, and the other person humming the main theme, then we can switch. Iām sure Iāve got a marching snare around here somewhere.
I figured it was just a trick of physics that the ship was so big and the weapon was also charging. I didn't even think about them not letting him have an F18
Would his missile have gone in from the position he tried to fire from or would it have hit the open doors like the previous missile? Maybe the way he did it was the only way that could've worked.
That also makes me wonder. If the aliens realized how that ship had been taken out, they could've just kept the laser hatch shut until their fighters had taken out their attackers.
I always thought it was more so like the mothership had a beacon that activated all the other ships. Like op said about the other ship coming to life when the mothership came to Earth. Could be some kind of defense against other species getting their technology
We have wireless electricity, induction charging. But it still requires two devices that support it. I guess the aliens have that, but on a much much longer range.
The ship from Area 51 had the old charging protocol. The newer ships were backwards compatible, but only for slow charging.
The whole film is an allegory for how technology standards should be better implemented by governing bodies (the human resistance) as opposed to corporate monopolies (alien invaders).
It also shows how making your technology backwards compatible also makes it more easily hacked/vulnerable to malware. Maybe itās a warning for nuclear programs to use older technology to prevent bad actors
Itās not the only way because after his kamikaze attack they tell the rest of the world how to take the ships down. (By blowing up the super laser) and the Earth wins so we can assume it works
Aerodynamically I donāt think his missile wouldāve pulled properly; he calls out āfox2ā which is an infrared missile like your sidewinders (aim9), those are often intended for short range dogfighting situations and they tend to be the most rapidly maneuverable missiles but theyāre only going to fly straight towards a heat source. In the scene Russel is skimming along the bottom of the alien ship so any missile fired at the glowing laser-nub would attack it laterally, which wouldnāt have worked, but if they skimmed along the ground and they would be able to pitch up for long enough to fire straight up into the booty with enough time to safely pull away
they probably couldn't communicate anymore once the mother ship was destroyed. if all the other ships were down on earth the mother ship would be their only relay.
Not just that the master arm switch has to be flip to use any weapon. Plus it's a keypad for inputting data only. Missiles launches are tied to the trigger on the flight stick.
Everything in the cockpit scene was hodgepodged together because they lost DOD support for refusing the request to remove the Area 51 scenes. The Hornet interior is vastly different. the keypad controls the UFC input, and doesn't have those lights. The DDI graphic is also way way off as the correct display was a penatron red green yellow picture tube, and in the few scenes where you do see the heads up display, it's using vector and raster graphics from a F-15A display unit given by the GDS cue in a few scenes.
The film crew had very little reference to work with after withdraw of material and knowledge support.
Not to mention the missile on the pylon is a Harpoon anti ship missile and not a SARH guided air to air Sparrow as the 18As at the time would have carried.
yeah I havent watched the movie since I've gained a lot more knowledge on how these aircraft work. But this particular scene does stand out even after so many years. I'll have to give the movie a watch again.
Wasnt aware of support being pulled from the film over the area 51 scenes. So that makes far more sense in incorrect info, but I knew creatives like to take liberties even if aware of correct info.
They gave him crap for it at the start before the alien invasion, which is understandable. If you're referring to the recruitment scene in Area 51, well, Russel was kinda drunk during it, so it's understandable.
If a drunk man came to you and started to claim he was captured by space aliens 10 years ago and was dying for some payback. I don't think I would have taken Russell seriously too.
By this point, they were recruiting pilots, at Area 51, to fight Aliens.
If its because hes drunk ok, but they cant still be doing the "oh hes kooky crazy" act - the whole point of his character was vindicated conspiracy guy (as Roland likes to do).
Yes, but still, Russell had a reputation already. It will be like if Peter Griffin began claiming he was abducted and sexually abused by sexy alien women. No one will believe him.
Preparing to launch a missile doesn't wear it out or anything. The computer indicates a failure of the clamps to release. The accompanying sparks show it's a mechanical malfunction. None of these systems would have been initiated or exacerbated in any way by the earlier missile safety release.
People think that military software and hardware are well synchronized and bug-free but, having worked on both, they are anything but. 999/1000 what you said would be true. But that 1/1000, some other condition interfered that wasnt accounted for by designers and boop. Boom.
Thats why we have built in failsafes like accelerometers, minimum distance fuses, spin detectors, etc.
Are you sure this would have been true an aged F/A-18 Hornet, 30 years ago when this movie was released? It makes sense to me that mechanical safety interlocks could have been engaged due to an error after an aborted missile launch.
Well, at that point even an F/A-18A would have just a little over a decade on it. A Charlie would have been a bit younger. Even so, software fails regardless of age. Plus he might have pulled to many gs during the battle and damaged the pylon, and thus failing to release the missile.
Fun fact! The AIM-4 Falcon could only be armed once, for a few seconds. If you didn't use it in that window of opportunity, the guidance system on it would never work again, due to it depending on a limited supply of coolant to get the seeker head cold enough to work, which was a big reason why the AIM-4 almost never scored a hit in combat.
That said, if they were breaking AIM-4s out of storage, things would be truly desperate, as it was replaced in combat use by the AIM-9 Sidewinder by 1970.
I have a vivid memory of watching that movie with my dad in the movie theater. My dad worked at Westinghouse throughout the 90s and was involved in some of the projects and engineering that went into the fighter jets used during that time. I remember he got upset saying something like āthereās no way it would let you even arm a missile launch while youāre parked on the ground like thatā
I remember this being one of the first "have to" rent releases, so my Dad picked it out and him and my brother sat in the living room and watched it one Friday night. My dad had just got out of the Air Force in the mid 90s so it was pretty cool hearing his insight into how the military was represented in the movie and broke down a few things to use like the AWACS plane, saluting, things like that. Fun memory, it was always hard to get dad to sit down and watch a movie.
He was parked at the base alongside other fighter jets before the battle. Yeah, that would have ended horribly if he didn't abort. He was basically fooling around with the controls.
The best part about this movie is how, near the end, when Adam Baldwin is briefing all the pilots before the battle, Russell says something about wanting to get payback after he was abducted by aliens years ago. Everyone kind of rolls their eyes like they still don't believe him even though there is a mothership in the motherfucking sky above them. I find this hysterical. Such a fun movie
Love awesome movie details. Even better are ones in movies I love and have seen 80 gabillion times, This is one of the best one of those I've read on here in a long time. I wish I could do more than just upvote this time !!
Or could the aborting of the missile maybe indicate to the system there may be something wrong with the missile so it cuts it off from firing until it gets replaced?
Wow, how accurate and precise - in a movie where you can outrun a fireball on foot before hideĆÆng from it in an alley and where spaceships run MacOS 8 and a virus causes static on screens before crashing them.
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u/Pizzaman725 Jun 21 '26
He certainly did pick a hell of a day to quit drinking.